Eating E.T.: Carnism and Speciesism

To understand the reactions the meal produced, the article addresses two contrasting aspects of the human–non-human animal relationship—‘carnism’ and ‘pet-keeping’—and contemplates these in relation to the reactions to eating E. [...] The ‘happy’ cows and pigs in the pictures are perhaps never allowed to feel the sun on their skin, breathe fresh air, or nuzzle their snouts in the earth and eat the grass. [...] Human slavery and the colonisation of the Americas developed alongside the domestication of other species because those in power required human labour to maintain the subjugati on of other animals in farming (Nibert 2013). [...] Douglas examines the religious dietary rules set out in Book of Leviticus, and cites that among the animals we may eat are ‘the ox, the sheep, the goat, the hart, the gazelle, the roe-buck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain-sheep’ (Leviticus Deuteronomy xiv, in Douglas 2003: 52). [...] Perhaps the need for such a transformation was also reflected in the reactions of the conference participants in the E.